Ask HN: Work as .NET independant contractor in SF/Bay Area? Or re-specialize?
I'm a longtime developer, working mostly on .NET for an U.S. company as an employee for a South American branch, getting a (good by local standards) South American salary, but I've hit the "glass ceiling" and the only way to get a better salary is to go the management path.
I have an U.S. business visa so I thought I might try my hand going to SF and interviewing for .NET positions next year, working mostly remotely, but I do have where to stay in SF for short periods of in-house work (crunch times, project prep or whatever is needed).
I know .NET is not the most used stack, I don't know if I'd have more success if I brush up React/Vue (I'm not a fan of frontend work), I'm mostly a backend person. I work with Java occasionally but I'd rather not. Rails demand has gone way down from what I see, but seems much more in demand than .NET - should I learn it?. I have a chatbot in production use but it's very basic - I did try out all the current frameworks. I'm also very comfortable with Azure but not at all with AWS.
Pretty sure I'd at least learn the basics of AWS, but I'm not sure where to spend the next few months preparing. I probably should shore up on the algorithms interview questions but those are unrelated to the actual job :)
Very grateful for any feedback.